We've
all had the experience of reading a good book or watching a good drama
and for a while assuming some aspect of one of the characters. Maybe
we pick up a new expression or a new way of dressing; maybe we pick
up a swagger or an intriguing opinion. It feels good to explore the
new viewpoint.

On
the negative side, most of us have had the experience of recognizing
some aspect from someone we didn't particularly admire as part of our
"real" self. Maybe we catch our self treating a child like someone who
once treated us that way or expressing an opinion whose only basis is
that we resisted it when we heard some other self express it.

Even
more alarming, we may discover we have the same illness or infirmity
of body that some other self we knew had÷some other self we may not
have treated as well as we should have. Try as we might to suppress
this resisted aspect, it reappears.

When
we begin to study what is known about the structure of the self, we
find it consists of preferences (beliefs) and a relative time-space
location from which the preferences are asserted. The preferences are
like the semitransparent overlays that turn the white light of a projector
into an image on a screen. Some of the overlays we cannot easily remove,
because they contain a forgotten recording of events that automatically
asserts the overlay as the ONLY choice. The image projected through
these overlays onto the screen is sensed as, "Here I am. This is me."

Most
of this is standard phil-ligion-ology (PHIL-osophy, re-LIGION, psych-OLOGY)
and is understood by most of the more popular schools.

Since
each school is subject to its own belief system overlays, there are
wide disagreements as to which overlays are preferable. A common denominator
is that almost every school will argue for some and against others.

The
goal of installing, removing or modifying: the overlays is the principal
task addressed by most of the doctrines, scriptures or technologies
generated by these schools. The means as well as which overlays are
to be addressed differ, but the determination to change something is
remarkably analogous.

The
most basic means of modifying an overlay, and probably the least dangerous,
consists of reacquainting the individual with the recordings of forgotten
events that are causing the overlay to be asserted. The hope is that
new conclusions will be drawn altering the overlay and thereby achieving
a change in self.

The
major difficulty with such an approach is illustrated by the fact that
when white light is projected through both a blue overlay and a yellow
overlay, it will appear on the screen as green. If we determine to eliminate
the green light, we will probably go looking for a green overlay, which
in this case doesn't exist. If the green light represents a psychosomatic
illness or a state of depression or an unacceptable behavior, we might
have some difficulty in locating the exact combination of overlays that
is responsible for the condition's creation.

This
stumbling block has left many of us wishing that we could remove all
the overlays, insuring that the right combination was eliminated. Then,
on a blank screen, we could replace selected overlays to generate the
self that would interest the people we wish to attract or to generate
the self that would align with what we want to achieve.

And
literally, the Avatar¨ Course came to our rescue!

One
of the results we experienced on Avatar was the ability to closely approach
and/or achieve identitylessness÷ in other words, to experience a self
that is without aspect or location. It was and is an enlightening, in-every-
moment ability to make any choice or none, to select our own overlays.
That state is true self, the Avatar. It offered us the opportunity to
create the image of life that we preferred, but there was no guarantee
of success without our own push.

The
first task we faced as new Avatars was to integrate the efforts that
had previously obstructed our choices. The world obligingly presented
them. To many of us, this integration was even a greater challenge that
the exercises on the course, but who would turn their back when the
gift of standing at the helm of life was offered?

Could
anyone have ever dreamed what an incredible thrill the Avatar Materials
would unleash?

The Mission of Avatar®by
Harry Palmer

The mission of
Avatar in the world is to catalyze the integration of belief systems.

To
the people who have taken Avatar or the Avatar Master Course, this mission
statement is so instinctively obvious that little is ever said about
it. Even when Avatars are countries apart, there is a natural alignment
that causes their efforts to forward the mission. Orders and supervision
are rarely necessary.

Attempting
to explain this spontaneous cooperation to someone who has not yet experienced
Avatar is an interesting challenge.

Clearly
one cannot draw a circle or circumscribe a quantity or quality without
creating an inside and an outside. Whenever a line is drawn, two sides
appear. They may be in-side and out-side,
as in the case of a circle, or right- side and left-side
in the case of a vertical line, or near-side and far-side
in the case of a horizontal line.

This
two-sided principle is known as dualism or polar relativity, or simply
by the Chinese rendition of yin and yang. The light depends upon the
dark; the direction up cannot exist without also determining the direction
down; what is good is relative to what is bad; what should be done determines
as well what should not be done.

When
the primal awareness, which neither contains nor is contained, acts
to define itself, it defines as well what it is not. In one brush stroke,
two sides appear: the I am and the other.
This awareness of definition is the birth of consciousness.

Consciousness
knows itself as what it has defined itself as, or one
side of the line or boundary that has been created. Thus it has reduced
its ownership and control of creation by half.

How
many more times can consciousness reduce its ownership and control by
half?

If
it were to define and deny itself thirty one times (i.e., thirty-one
geometric divisions), the two billion plus others on planet
Earth would be accounted for. If these two billion plus were then to
divide and deny themselves ten more times, every creature and every
creation in the Universe would probably be accounted for.

The
life that each of us experiences is an interplay of resisted and desired
motion between the qualities and quantities that we create and define
ourselves as and the qualities and quantities that we
create but assert that we are not. (Conscious intention is merely
a knowing shift of identification.) To an Avatar Master who experiences
a non- dual essence, life is simple and fun.

An
Avatar Master teaches the use of tools and techniques for bringing about
a reconciliation between the factors that the student feels as
I am and the factors that he or she feels as I
am not. This is more than an understanding.

As
progress is made, the sides begin to fade and disappear.
The Avatar student begins his or her own re- engineering of consciousness
knocking down walls, opening spaces, changing directions and quickly
finds a sense of harmony with and wholeness about existence that, prior
to initiation by the Avatar Master, only the esoteric few have ever
experienced.

With
this harmony and wholeness comes a natural, rational extension
of space and genuine tolerance of others.

Communication
opens up; viewpoints are explored and modified; separation and difference
begin to dissolve into the illusory specters they have always been.
An effortless love is born.

The
efforts of the new Avatar or the new Master are instinctively in alignment
with the mission of Avatar: . . . to catalyze the integration
of belief systems.